Did your parents try to learn about AS after your diagnosis

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Were your parents eager to learn about your Asperger's Syndrome after you were diagnosed.


I am sometimes very unhappy that when I was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome ten years ago, All my parents did was buy one book that wasn't highly recommended on A.S and they did very little else other than picking up a few things here and there.

They never put in much effort to learn about the majority of symptoms of the condition which made life much harder than it could of been.

But what especially annoyed me over the years was when they would ignorantly try to relate to my aspie characteristics, like I say I am very sensitive to certain things like light,noise and various other things they'll say ''oh yeah I'm like that all the time'' when they can't because they're not on the spectrum.

Did your parents try to learn

Nope.

Yes, my mum did, a lot. She accumulated a box full of books on autism and AS. My dad insisted there was nothing wrong with me and didn't want to hear anything about it. He has some autistic traits and a couple people in my family have pointed that out to him but he adamantly denies that too.

My mom had a bunch pages on AS printed from the internet after I was diagnosed and she also had a story printed from there too written by Temple Grandin and she had some other page that was someone else's IEP or something and all the personal information was crossed out like his name and had a paper with resources and books and phone numbers written on it. I am not sure why she had all that stuff. But she never had any books about it.

My mom already thinks she knows everything about autism. Like most people who think they know everything about autism, she hasn't got a clue.

I was diagnosed at age 13 (with PDD-NOS previously at 5 or 6) and, yes, they did.

Yes, I told my mother one month ago and she has already read two books and visited many web sites. She is really trying to understand. (The problem is that she speaks and read well only French, and most of the French books on the topic are sh*t).

My father, on the other hand, soes not seem to care much. But he was never much into psychologically helping himself or other people ; I think he's afraid of psychologists and psychiatry.

Yes. They read and reread my diagnostic report. Was surprised at first that my dad reacted that way because he does not have much stamina as has stopped reading newspapers, magazines in the last few years. Since the diagnostic report is difficult reading with statistical jargon etc I thought he would get bored. I now think he was as curious about himself as he was about me.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 19 Mar 2014, 1:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Hi Abcrone,
As with any medical condition I feel it is VERY IMPORTANT to see it as Something Seperate from a persons identity.
If not, a person can become trapped into that "role", and become "stuck" there.

Abcrone, I just wanted to point this out as what you wrote had the word "your".:

If people are to overcome issues that any disabilty creates it is very important that they see it as being seperate from themselves.
Yes, we may be on the spectrum, but the only limitations that we believe we have are those that we have placed upon ourselves. They may have been re-enforced by other people, but it is VERY IMPORTANT to note that we are NOT the disabilty. We are individuals, where each of us is unique.

I agree with your second quote but not with the first.

I don't want to "separate" myself from AS. It is a part of me. Knowing that gives me a better understanding of myself and that helps me a lot for my psychotherapeutic work.

It is not like other "medical conditions" like the common cold, the flu or even depression which are plainly diseases, things that bring no benefit of any sort and should just be cured.

I am not more an aspie that I am a man or right-handed, but I am those things. But most importantly I am myself. Saying that I am an aspie, a man and right-handed just means that I find these qualifiers relevant to my person and identity.

I am autistic, and my autism is not separate from my identity. "Autistic" is part of what defines me, just like "college student" and "American" and "short". If it's okay for me to say that being female is part of who I am, then why can't I say that about autism? Or is it because disability is something that's so terrible that we need to reject it and pretend it doesn't exist?

Obviously, I'm not some kind of walking blob of autism, because autism doesn't come in blobs; it comes with people.

One of the most patronizing and pitying things people think about disabled people is that our one and only goal in life should be to become non-disabled, or to hide our disabilities as much as possible, or to make up for the disability by doing something amazing and justifying our existence. We can't just live our lives; we can't have goals and dreams completely unrelated to our disabilities. In fact, we can't have "real" lives at all as long as we remain disabled.

It's as though we're written down, like stories in a book, and the only possible happy ending is to become non-disabled or somehow approximate being non-disabled. And you know what? Those stories aren't the ones we write. They're written for us. They're pushed on us, expected of us.

I say we have the right to write our own stories. In my story, I am autistic, and I am fine with that. I want to become the person I know I can be, the person I am meant to be. I determine what my identity is, and I determine what my goals are, and spending my life becoming some kind of neurotic faux-neurotypical is not among them.

The parent I live with, after a few years.

Mom did ; Dad didn't.

My mom believes that I have it. My dad does not believe that I have it. I'm in the middle... I just want an evaluation.

After my diagnosis, my mom did everything she could to find out more about it. Dad, while accepting that I had it, sat there and let mom do most of the work (which is probable preferable, as we didn't get along). Mom also pushed me to break through a couple of my tendencies, and basically grow up to be a functional member of society.

As a pervasive condition/disability Aspergers-Autism affects and has affected nearly every facet of my life. My personality has an effect on how Aspergers-Autism presents itself as well and completely defining certain areas of my life. Another words as my user name suggests Aspergers-Autism while not all of me is a very important part of me.

No, my mom has been in denial about my AS since I was diagnosed at the age of 13.